


running away isn't as hard as they say

by kwritten



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 16:45:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1612187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>prompt: tvd, caroline, but everything looks perfect from far away</p>
            </blockquote>





	running away isn't as hard as they say

She's the very last one they expect to run away. She's the steady one, she doesn't believe in days off or breaks. If life kept track of sick days, she'd have a perfect attendance record.  
  
 _She remembers thinking about the world in those terms and there's something rather bitter in the remembering._  
  
  
  
Only after she is gone does she realize for the first time that there is a longing sense of silence in the act of remembrance. Something that is severely lacking in the wake of a battle with the tears still fresh on your face. Or even, months later, walking through a tattered, worn out moment in time only now it's not a moment... it is just the street where you live that inhales memories one after the other until they are all gone and you are just walking down the same old street just like always.  
  
  
  
  
Her lovers (one ancient and bitter who brings with him glitter and decay in the same hands as if it were a gift) tell her with a soft laugh that memories can wound stronger than regret or intention.  
  
  
  
(The other is ancient and young and she offers no guidance or wisdom or gifts, just soft kisses in the moonlight and that's worse somehow.)  
  
  
Oh, there are more - but in time and time she comes to realize that you only count the ones that matter.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
It is years or months or even merely hours and she'll never be sure but she isn't there anymore and it will hit her that nothing again will ever be so lovely as the war she left behind.  
  
  
  
(because in the midst of that battlefield is a piece of her heart, ground into dust, still beating in fragments)  
  
  
  
  
  
  
"What do you miss the most?" she'll ask with a deep knowing in her bright eyes.  
  
And Caroline's eyes will twinkle, "Well there was a really great bar..."  
  
  
  
  
  
When you leave the wreckage behind, you forget about the shadows and remember only brightness. When you walk away from war, you carry with you a memory of darkness you can't bear to face and wrap it up in glitter and hope.  
  
  
 _Everything looks perfect from far away._  
  
  
  
  
  
"Why don't you just go back?!" she asks with tears streaming down her face and it breaks hearts, that face.  
"Because it wouldn't be the same," Caroline shrugs.  
  
  
(And in her heart, she knows it would be. There's always a reason to walk away. And it's never the reason that keeps you from coming back.)


End file.
